Venom

Coming to prominence towards the end of the 'New Wave of British Heavy Metal', Venom's first two albums – Welcome to Hell (1981) and Black Metal (1982) – are considered a major influence on thrash metal and extreme metal in general. Venom's second album proved influential enough that its title was used as the name of an extreme metal subgenre: black metal.

Venom's original personnel came from three different bands: Guillotine, Oberon and DwarfStar. Read more on Last.fm

Venom on Thrash Hits

July 29th, 2013

The world needs yet another book about black metal as much as Varg Vikernes needs to buy another gunrack, right? Well, Dayal Patterson doesn’t agree (about the book part, at any rate). A regular writer and photographer to Metal Hammer (as well as an occasional contributor to Record Collector and The Quietus), Dayal has penned Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult, a mammoth 600+ page book on “the progress of the genre, from its infancy in the early eighties through to its resurrection in the nineties and onwards to the fascinating scene we see today” (cheers, for that, PR blurb). Blimey.

With all that in mind, we gave Dayal a buzz to ask him our usual mix of awkward, annoying, and ever-so-slightly insightful questions about his book, the musicians he interviewed in order to write it, and just why British black metal bands look so silly in corpse paint.

February 27th, 2012

With Sunday just past marking the 20th anniversary of the release of Darkthrone’s A Blaze In The Northern Sky (and therefore being pretty much the closest thing to a birthday that black metal can claim to have), over the coming week we’re letting Tom Dare off the leash to run his mouth about one of metal’s most controversial off-shoots. But instead of rehashing the same-old same-old tales from the genre’s torrid history, we thought we’d get him to look at how the genre’s evolved since those first, frosty releases two decades ago. Take it away, Mr. Dare…

March 31st, 2010

With all out “Download Festival this, Sonisphere Festival that, Oh look Reading & Leeds” blathering recently, we’ve really missed out on emphasising one fact about the upcoming UK festival season: that High Voltage Festival, frankly, looks like it’s going to piss all over everyone else. The fact that it was confirmed today that Opeth will be playing their only UK festival show of 2010 there merely cements that fact.